J-zine - Served Bombay Style

Served Bombay Style

There is undeniably a feeling of strangeness; here we are in a back lane of a Bombay suburb, eating enchiladas and burritos. The fast food restaurant calls itself Crunchy Munchy and might have been teleported from some small US town. Almost, but not quite. Side by side with salsa, pizza, toasted sandwiches and chop suey on the menu card is the Bombay favourite, Pav Bhaji. In Bombay, multi-cuisine is the keyword for eating places in all price classes.

And yet, all is not as it seems. In place of tortillas, Bombay mexican food uses homely chapattis -- similar, but not quite the same. The salsa is tasty, but it is not Mexican salsa. It has been adapted to Bombay taste, including that touch of sweetness that reminds us that Vile Parle is a Gujarati suburb. Gujartis simply must put a little jaggery (a type of raw sugar) in everything.

I glance casually across to the nearby table and watch one of the sari clad women pouring liberal quantities of Chinese hot-sauce on her pizza. I have seen an Italian waiter request a tourist to leave the restaurant because he insulted the chef by requesting ketchup to put on his pizza. But that was Italy; this is Bombay. I doubt if that waiter would have recognized what the lady was so liberally smothering with sauce. It was Bombay Peez-ah, not Italian Pizza.

And there we have the crux of the matter. In Bombay, things are done -- or served -- Bombay style. Everything and everyone must adapt themselves to this city. One of my earliest experiences of the city was a slightly surreal conversation with the head waiter of one of Bombay's five star hotels complaining about the expresso coffee I had ordered. What was delivered was a rather miserable imitation of capuccino - with milk and froth, but made with instant coffee powder. Expresso coffee, Bombay style.

Neither do the regional cuisines of India escape the relentless Bombay-isation. The South Indian idlis may be authentic enough, but the sambar that is served with it is sweet. And what do visitors from Madras think when they see their dosa (a paper-thin pancake) fried in butter and served with (Bombay-)Chinese filling? Their dismay must be shared by the North-Indians who see how the splendour of their Mughlai culinary tradition has been reduced to a stodgy multi-purpose sauce that seems to be used for all the Punjabi dishes in the menu.

Don't get me wrong; Bombay restaurant food is OK. The restaurants are full and the people sitting at the tables don't just gossip and chatter. Just like anywhere else in the world they eat with gusto. As long as you don't know how the original looked and tasted, you can enjoy the Bombay variant without a care. Just don't expect your burrito to be Mexican or your pizza to be Italian.

Driving in Bombay

Pav Bhaji: A dish consisting of a mixture of vegetables, cooked with a characteristic masala (spice mixture) and coarsely mashed. Served together with bread rolls that have been lightly fried with lashings of ghee (clarified butter).
Punjabi: Literally, from Punjab an area that straddles the Indo-Pakistan border. In Bombay the word is used loosely to refer to a style of cooking that has been adapted from a range of North Indian cuisines.
Gujarati: From the state of Gujarat. As recently as 1960, it was joined with Maharashtra, to form the Bombay Presidency. Bombay still has a large Gujarati population.